Industrial Relations Law - Essay Example

Industrial Relations Law "Since 1980 industrial relations law in the UK has adopted an anti-trade union stance and has been too restrictive. Thepresent government has taken some steps to redress the balance but what is needed is a radical overall of industrial relations law which provides a framework which is workable to both unions and employers." The political "voice" of unions in the U.K appears to be stronger than it is. The Trade Union Congress is not affiliated with the Labour Party, but 36 large unions are. The collective bargaining process in the U.K. has been described as adversary in nature because of the arms length bargaining style and the minimal communications employed, although it is a "representational system" since the labor movement is not seeking to overcome the political economic system. In sum, the degree of external control placed on employers by unions in the U.K. is limited in international comparison. Conditions of employment are set at the firm level and therefore more likely to give employers more flexibility in adapting HR policies to the firm context, although at times these policies also limit managerial flexibility, to wit, the restrictive work practices that evolved in U.K factories. Diversity rather than uniformity characterizes the industrial relations experiences of nations. The search to resolve or to accommodate conflicts which arise in the conduct of work and in the distribution of the fruits of labor is universal. But varied strategic choices set within heterogeneous cultures and ideologies, political and economic conditions, industrial relations institutions and power distributions have occasioned rich array of global outcomes. Industrial relations is a discipline concerned with the systematic study of all the aspects of the employment relationships. A central problem in attempts to test empirically generalized models of an industrial relations system mirrors those encountered in the application of generalized theories of the capitalist state. The process of particularization sustains structural mechanisms within an industrial relations system that reproduce limitations in the institutional structure of a particular state. Hence, patterns of regulation legitimize the centralized power of the capitalist class yet are likely to operate in potentially contradictory manner. Partial access to the state through a voluntary system of industrial relations has, in the UK, sustained the historically embedded yet short-term interest of many employers. However, collective laissez faire and voluntarism has positioned trade unions and collective bargaining as easy targets in proximate explanations of poor post-war economic performance. Collective laissez faire appeared functional - it helped secured post-war recovery - yet contradictory; in the context of full employment it appeared inflationary. More significantly, collective laissez faire is functional because it is an institutional embodiment of the process of particularization in the UK state. The extent of industrial action: In the UK, official statistics on the use of industrial sanctions relate only to strikes. They measure three dimension of strike activity - their number (how frequent they are), their size (number of workers involved) and their duration (the number of working days lost). This last measure is often distorted by a few big strikes. For example, in 1979 an engineering industry- wide strike accounted for 55 percent of the 29.5 million working days lost in that year. In 2000 the number of working days lost in the UK was 499,00. However, disputes still happen - for example, the series of one day stoppages in 2002 on the railways over the widening of pay differentials between drivers, who were in short supply, and other railway employees. The dearth of drivers meant that the railway employees wanted to give them higher pay rises than other staff. The latter then went on strike because of the smaller increases offered to them. The year 2002 also saw strikes in teaching in London, and threatened strikes in local government, the fire service and the Royal mail. Employers and employees have to think carefully before imposing or threatening to impose industrial sanctions. There is little to be gained in imposing industrial action if it is unlikely to be successful especially if economic pressures may quickly mount as the organizations product market competitors take advantage of its industrial problems to poach its customers. It is pointless to relocate operations to another site unless an alternative be recruited at the new site. The number of strikes and the proportion of days lost through strike action has diminished significantly in the UK in the past few years. This reduction has been caused more by economic pressures than by legislation. Unions have had to choose between taking strike action, which could lead to closure, or survival on the terms dictated by employers with a fewer jobs. In addition, unions in manufacturing found that their members who remained in jobs did well out of local productivity bargaining and threatened strike action. Although dispute levels have declined through the 1990s and early 2000s, there are signs that some managers have been performing inadequately in managing their employee relations, in that there has been a dramatic growth in the number of complaints to employment tribunals by employees against employer's behavior. In the 1980s the number of complaints reported to ACAS averaged about 45,000 per annum, but the number increased every year throughout the 1990s. In 2000 the number of such complaints exceeded 167,000.This would suggest arising sense of individual grievances among people at work. To address how a delegated industrial relations system appears and remains functional to the UK state require application of historically positioned theory. The following subsections pursue this application by examining the limited role of law in UK industrial relations and how this reproduces formative influences on the state as collective laissez faire in the industrial relations system. Both sections aim to specify embedded patterns of governance that connect the state and the industrial relations system. The state and law in the UK's industrial relations system The voluntarist tradition in the UK industrial relations system centers on the assumption that the regulation of employment is largely ultra vires to law resting on the acceptance of legitimate conflict in an otherwise co-operative relationship. However, whereas the contemporary pattern of legal intervention in the system has been a long time in coming, hostility from the legal community to collective conflict and representation by trade unions has a long history. Judicial latitude in the 1901 Taff Vale case held that a trade union was responsible for civil liability as a result of strike activity by its members. More recently, in 1964, judicial intervention in an otherwise legitimate trade dispute created the tort of civil intimidation to establish trade union liability for strike action taken by its membership. The 1906 Trade Dispute Act set aside the Taff Vale judgment to give trade unions institutional immunity from civil liability if the action of its members were in support of a trade dispute relating to terms and conditions of employment. Equally, in 1964, the incoming Labor government legislated to set aside the Rookes case. Moreover, the Rookes case played a direct role in the creation of the Donovan Commission. Further, the Labour government's the 1969 White Paper 'In Place of Strife' proposed legal regulation of industrial action in trade disputes but failed to win Cabinet, trade union or significant levels of employer support. Finally, the National Industrial Relations Court created by the 1971 Industrial Relations Act failed to win support beyond the judiciary. As an institutional reproduction of the UK's highly particularized state, this pattern of self regulation between employers and employees serves the broad interests of employers and trade unions alike. Employers are able, subject to auxiliary legislation, to manage industrial relations as they see fit. Equally, release from the change of conspiracy and immunity from civil liability legitimized trade union activity beyond their role of job regulation in the workplace. The limited role of law in the system is a direct consequence of highly particularized ruling-class interests and preferred patterns of regulation in the UK state. The legacy of formative influences, particularized during the period of industrialization in national pathways, remains in the contemporary period. National pathways in economic and political regulation are deeply embedded, they precede and structure contemporary developments and pressures in the international economy at regional level (EU) or global level (globalization). Particularization in the UK system of industrial relations General theories of the capitalist state specify accumulation of capital and the legitimization of inequality within the capitalist system of production and distribution as the functional objectives of the capitalist state. The process of particularization how an individual state maintains accumulation and legitimizes distribution inequality, to this extent it is functional. More critically, particularization demonstrates how the generalized function of the capitalist state is contradictory where formative influences structure the process to limit functionalism. Industrial sanctions : Generally, industrial sanctions should be the last action as it proves to be costly on both sides to impose them on each other. The threat of the imposition of industrial sanctions can be important in bringing about a reconciliation of the different interests of employers and employees. The threat that one side might impose industrial sanctions, with their ensuring costs, on the other may actually be as important as if sanctions were imposed. It is the threat that can oblige the parties to adjust their position and negotiate a peaceful settlement. Both parties will be reluctant to go ahead and impose industrial sanctions because of their associated costs. However, the possibilities means that the parties have to have regard to them and adjust their behavior accordingly. In the current national statistics, the coverage of the various forms of industrial action ranges from the most restricted to the widest, i.e. from those limited to constitutional, legal or official strikes or lock-outs for which certain conditions have to be met under the law, to those covering all forms of action, whether or not the statutory procedures have been followed, whether or not there is stoppage of work, and whether the workers involved are employees or self-employed workers. The coverage is often linked to the relevant industrial relations legislation. Strikes are the most traditional form of industrial action, as is reflected by the original (and continuing) coverage of the statistics compiled by many countries. Over the years, however, many different forms of action have evolved, which fall short of strikes and lock-outs as there is generally no work stoppage. None the less, they usually affect the output or work of the workers involved, as well as of others. The existing forms of action and their incidence vary considerably between countries; an inventory would include go-slows, working to rule, overtime bans, sit - ins, blockades, load - out bans , boycotts and mass leave. Some of these other forms of industrial action have become more prevalent in the past few decades. They often occur when workers hesitate to strike because of the consequences for their jobs or incomes or if strikes are considered as a weapon of last resort, to be avoided except under the most extreme circumstances. This other forms of industrial action provide workers with opportunity to show their feeling without actually stopping work; little information is available regarding forms of action taken by employers other than lock-outs. Another indication of unrest, but which does not necessarily affect production or work, consists of strike notice; often a threatened strike does not materialize, but the threat is used as a bargaining tool. From the given table, we conclude that there has been a decrease in the incidents of strikes and days lost through strikes action as evidence of an improvement in the quality of employee relations. So we can see that a low incidence of strike activity may have relatively little to do with the quality of employee relations, it may simply be the result of such action being outlawed and/ or employees finding alternative means of venting their frustrations or mitigating their dissatisfaction, such as absenteeism, labor, turnover, working to rule, withdrawing cooperation or banning overtime, each of which may also be indicators of quality. Strikes, lock-outs or other forms of Industrial action do not exist without the presence of some type of conflict, but the conflict is not necessarily between workers and their employers. For example, disagreement may arise over government policies or decisions over which the employer has no influence. A group of self-employed workers may decide to take action to protest about conditions affecting their work. Workers may also take action to express sympathy for or solidarity with another group of workers, even though they themselves are not directly concerned by the labor dispute. Generalized or widespread action may occur, in which the target of the protest may be the authorities or employers, or a combination of circumstances. Official statistics on the incidence of labor disputes in 1999, published in June 2000, show that 242,000 working days were lost from 205 stoppages of work due to disputes - in each case the second-lowest totals since records began in 1891. The available figures for 2000 suggest that industrial action remains at historically low levels. Industrial actions included strikes by local government workers, health workers and unofficial local stoppages affecting postal services. The legal regulation of industrial disputes The freedom to take industrial action has traditionally been seen as offering the prospect of some kind of countervailing social power for employees via effective trade unionism. Recognizing the disparity between the bargaining position of individual employers and that of their employer. In Britain, there is no right to strike as such. Instead, the freedom to take industrial action has been conferred by granting trade unions, their officials and representatives Statutory protections or 'immunities' from common law liabilities which would otherwise make their action unlawful. Without these, the organizers of industrial action would be liable for civil wrongs (torts), including that of inducing breach of employment contracts, and would thus be exposed to injunctions and damage claims. The system of immunities was developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the Trade Disputes Act 1906, and remains the cornerstone of the contemporary statutory framework for industrial action - having been briefly displaced in favor of ( highly circumscribed) positive rights under the Industrial relations Act 1971. What is clear is that by end of the year the UK will have to legislate for substantially enhanced information and consultation rights for employees - a development with highly significant implications for UK industrial relations in an area which until now has been largely unregulated by the Law , and one which will take the UK further away from its voluntarist traditions. CONCLUSION: Since restrictions on freedom of association can be justified to protect the rights of others, the present law and practice in the UK proscribing certain organizations linked to political violence does not infringe international standards. But there should be either parliamentary or judicial supervision of proscription and the need for proscription should be regularly scrutinized. The combination of statutory employment protection rights and the law of unfair dismissal, which together guarantee a positive right to membership of a trade union, comply with the broad principles underpinning the international human rights standards on the right to freedom of association. The law and practice in the UK on collective actions by trade unions, in particular strikes, falls short of the international human rights standards. In particular, the ability of employers to dismiss any one taking part in strike action violates recognized standards of freedom of association. Legislation in the UK limiting trade union 'closed shops' complies with international standards. REFERENCES: Blyton, P. and Turnbull, P., (2004): The Dynamics of Employee Relations. London, Macmillan. Read More